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Advice To Adolescent Poets, When Your Own Resources Do Not Seem Sufficient
In my adolescence, I was not mature enough to think of
some very simple precepts that, now, decades later, I
wish some experienced Poet had shared with me. I
think I have a little more experience now, and so I
share these with you---as, due to time's restrctions, I
cannot deliver them to my younger self.
1. Save all poems; discard nothing!
2. Fasten clip, staple, or retain in specific folders all drafts of
any poem you have written and revised.
3. Invest in folders (lots of them), or additional computer
memory (lots of it).
4. Date each poem, each revision, each version; if possible,
also record the place of writing and, if convenient, the
circumstances that led to the poem's composiition, even
if those circumstances are not pleasant. This will aid you
to remember, when you get to my age, and it will also
assist future scholars who examine your poems.
5. Do no be bound by past circumstances, even those you consider
to be negative, or to have caused, or led to, failures. Do not be
bound by fears of future circumstances.
6. Remember that those around you who doubt your intentions,
abilities, or appropriateness can only raise questions: they
cannot provide answers, and you are under no obligation to
provide them any anwers or explanations.
7. Do not worry about what people think. By the time you reach
my age, you will learn that most people (Poets being a major
exception to this) do not know how to think.
8. The choice to write Poetry does not mean you are politically
subversive, sexually perverted, socially inept, or emotionally
unstable.
9 Learn from as many Poets---especially those considered to be
classics (examples: Vergil, T. S. Eliot, J. V. Cunningham, Patriciajj,
and djtj). Do not judge a Poet by politics, sexual orientation,
social engagements or emotional stabilities. Judge only their Poems.
10. Poems you particularly like---yours, or others'---are like highway
signs on the interstate: they provide excellent and useful information,
especially for the road ahead of you. Poems you particularly dislike---
yours , or others'---are like guard rails above a canyon or warning
signs for hazards.
Starward
Of these I have of many been
Of these I have of many been remiss -
1 - failed. Hardly any of my 'juvenalia' has been preserved
2 - ever streamlining the process, the mountain of revisions, drafts and prior amendments have also been done away with
3 - mixed bag of tricks that still needs to be improved
4 - began doing this after the fact but a large portion of the archive was destroyed by natural disaster
5 - easier said than done, but doable
6 - no skin off my nose
7 - there is so much work to do on my own thinking to be bothered by others
8 - ah yes
9 - the curriculum is ongoing and expanding
10 - this is very much like driving under the influence and for one I am glad it isn't a physical thoroughfare for fear of mishaps on the highway.
here is poetry that doesn't always conform
galateus, arkayye, arqios,arquious, crypticbard, excalibard, wordweaver
Thank you for your comment,
Thank you for your comment, and for responding point by point---what you have written is instructive to anyone else who reads the poem. When I read djtj's adolescent poems that she shared with us on PostPoems, I felt ashamed of myself for failing to have her level of maturity when I, too, had been that age. I did not protect my poems, or defend them from loss. Djtj's example also reminded me of the example of the great Greek Poet, Comstantine Cavafy, who maintained a modest apartment in Alexandria, Egypt where he worked for the British colonial authority as a clerk in the Department of Irrigation. One whole room of the already small residence was devoted to his manuscripts (he mostly self published by making copies of his poems, binding them in clips or folders, and giving them to a select circle of friends and acquaintances). He was smart enough to retain his early poems, even though he was mostly ashamed of them. But I did not become familiar with his work until well into my adult years, so his example was not available to me at the time I needed it. As I thought of djtj's example, I decided to admit my early folly and write it down so that it might (I pray, sincerely) be of use to some adolescent, like I once was, who is a little overwhelmed by what this thing called being a Poet really is. I am sorry that I did not really realize these things until I was past middle age. But it makes sense within the pattern of my life---as I am always a day late and a dollar short on most things. I am very, very glad that God cares for the eleventh hour folks as much as for the first hour folks, because I seemed to have built my entire existence on the eleventh hour.
Thanks again for the comment.
Starward
This is one incalculable
This is one incalculable gift, a condensed handbook, actually, that contains a complete spectrum of success strategies for young writers who hopefully won't have to repeat some of the mistakes I personally made. These valuable tips (that can make the difference between despair and perseverance) aren't limited to nuts and bolts information because, as we now know, it takes more than textbook knowledge to overcome all the roadblocks, trainwrecks and discouragement that buffet any creative individual.
With empathy and reassurance, you gave future poets extremely valuable emotional tools to overcome the self-doubt and inhibitions that are like creative steel traps: they can stop inspiration before it has a chance to even formulate an idea.
If I could whisper in the ear of my younger self I would say all of these things, especially #5-#7, and I would certainly have more poems under my belt. #2 would have prevented the disaster of losing every poem I wrote before 1990 as well as your own personal loss before the days of computers. (Awesome titles, by the way.)
This golden key to literary achievement, especially if shared with young, impressionable minds, could be expounded upon and made into a book. I'm seeing it. But I certainly understand why you want to concentrate on building your poetic palace right here, now.
I'm so glad you gave a shout out to djtj, an example of poetic ingenuity everyone here should read.
My humble gratitude for your enduring support, even in this premium collection of life-altering tips. May it be a treasured guiding light to many.
Thank you for those kind
Thank you for those kind words. I am, in some ways, ashamed to realize that I, in my adolescence, was wholy unable to enter into the kind of maturity that djtj obviously demonstrated by retaining her notebook of adolescent poems. I was too full of myself to understand that any Poet has natural enemies---time, circumstances not conducive to poems---and also, as in my case, a couple of loved ones (in my case, my parents, first and foremost) intent on sabotoging ot undermining the effort. And when, at college, a very pleasantly provocative voice advised me to throw away my first two bundles of poems because "you can do better," I was so flattered that I did not consider that the loss was greater than the gain. (That same voice attempted, later, to persuade me to abandon my then identity as Starwatcher for a more mundane and conformable name.) So, paradoxically, the advise I have offered to young Poets is advise I was not smart enough to come up with when I needed it. Thinking that some young person might be in the same situation that i was, I hoped that perhaps these ten points might give a useful intervention to Poets, like I was---whose immaturity is a pitfall to their aspirations.
Wallace Stevens once wrote---I forget where---that, in his old age, he took more comfort in the poems he didn't finish, or even begin, than the poems that he had published. And I believe he said this after the double triumph of the Colleced Poems and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. The poems I allowed to be destroyed comfort me because their DNA (if I may make the metaphor) is in the poems I have posted here. In 1978, when I tossed two hundred or so pages down the interior dumpster at my dorimtory, North Hall, I would never have imagined the five thousand poems that Jason and PostPoems have allowed me to post here.
There is a real paradox about mistakes: they seem embarrassing (or worse); they have made me look a fool (or worse); and they intrude at the most inopportune time. Yet, like some of my college professors with whom I did not get along (gosh, imagine that!), they still did their best to teach me something.
OK, I am getting full of myself again, so I will close this with my sincere thanks and appreciation for your time to read the poem and to comment upon it. Over three years ago, random browsing brought me to your Poetry, and you are amd have been a tremendous blessing, and a very splendid example, in my life.
Starward
I'm enjoying the thread on
I'm enjoying the thread on this poem as much as the work itself! You invited an open-ended dialogue of intelligent reflection, instruction and personal experience that resonates beautifully. That's art as well! Thank you for your uplifting response.